Well-Worn Path From Wolf Pack To Rangers

From Dominic Moore to J.T. Miller, Ken Gernander has watched them climb from the minors to within four victories of the Stanley Cup. There are 10 of them who have made their way from Hartford to the Rangers, 10 players spanning 11 hockey seasons, all with one dream.

"We're all hoping for the ultimate prize," Gernander, the Wolf Pack coach, said Saturday. "Management, scouting staff, in the big picture, everybody has a vested interest.

"On the smaller scale, the players you know personally and have worked with, you know what they're going through. You root for them."

Gernander, who arrived in Hartford in 1997 along with the Rangers' AHL affiliate, has known Moore as a teammate. He has known Dan Girardi and Marc Staal as an assistant coach. For the past seven seasons, he has known the rest as a head coach. Gernander played on the 2000 Calder Cup champion, yet over the entirety of the following season, only eight of those players moved up to the Rangers for a total of 151 man games.

After his Hall of Fame run with the Edmonton Oilers, Glen Sather, who has built and rebuilt the Rangers since taking over in 2000, initially spent mightily on free agents. Yet if anything speaks to development it is the fact that in 2012, 10 former Wolf Pack players played 182 man games in the playoffs alone. This spring, the second time the Rangers made the conference finals in three years, 10 former Wolf Pack have played in 139.

"With the collective bargaining agreements, the salary cap, the structure of how you build your NHL teams now, there's a premium on development of players," Gernander said. "That's the way it is in this day and age. Especially if you're not going to fall to the bottom and get high-end lottery picks."

The Rangers' No. 1 defense pairing came through the XL Center. So did three productive forwards. So did one of the uplifting stories of New York's magical spring.

Before he began a journey through nine NHL cities, Moore played for the Wolf Pack between 2003 and 2005. Gernander remembers vividly sitting next to Moore, a Harvard graduate, in the locker room.

"We used to share the USA Today crossword," Gernander said. "He handled the big words and I handled the three-letter no-brainers."

Moore's wife, Katie, whom he met at Harvard, died in January 2013 after a brave battle with liver cancer. His return to the game after a year away has been nothing short of wondrous. Martin St. Louis, who lost his mom France to a heart attack May 8, scored the overtime winner in Game 4 against Montreal. Moore had the only goal in Game 6 to send the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Final. The goals stand as the biggest this spring for the Rangers and their fans.

"There is so much overlap between your professional life and personal life," Gernander said. "A big part of both is character, and character is Dominic's greatest attribute as a player and a man. He has so much moral fiber. It's what defines him."

If you were to make a list of Rangers candidates for the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, it starts with Henrik Lundqvist. St. Louis is second. After suffering a shoulder injury on April 1, Ryan McDonagh was up and down through the first 11 playoff games. He has been brilliant since. Only Drew Doughty of the Kings and Duncan Keith of the Blackhawks have logged more ice time in the playoffs.

"The way Ryan reads the game, penalty-killing, defensively, he's so intuitive," said Gernander, who coached McDonagh for 38 games in 2010-2011. "Every time something new has been presented to him, he grows into it and masters the step. He just keeps raising the bar."

After being acquired from Montreal for Scott Gomez — a robbery that ranks among the best trades in Rangers history — McDonagh was called up on Jan. 3, 2011. It is no exaggeration that he is playing the best defense at MSG since Brian Leetch. And with Girardi, McDonagh has found a defensive soul mate. They never played together in Hartford and now they look as if they should never be separated.

Girardi played 111 regular season and 13 playoff games in Hartford from 2005 to 2007. Although he isn't dynamic, Gernander pointed to the undrafted Girardi as a Memorial Cup champion in juniors, a high IQ guy, and wonders how he flew under the radar.

"There are all kinds of toughness," Gernander said. "When you look at the amount of shot-blocking McDonagh and Girardi do, how they take hits to make plays, pay that physical price, it's pretty special. It's easy to throw a big hit and get a building stirred, but that same person might not want to be the first one back to absorb the hit to move the puck out. The two use all their assets, stick fending, boxing out, finishing hits. They're complete defenders."

With Staal, who played with the Wolf Pack in the 2006 playoffs, dealing with concussion issues during the 2011-2012 season, former Rangers coach John Tortorella moved McDonagh up to the top pairing. Staal and Anton Stralman give the Rangers a strong top four D.